Here is a burger recipe that really works for my family. Meniere’s safe + vegetarian.

Rolls: I’ll upload our failure-proof sodium-free bread-roll recipe soon, but you can follow any yeast bread-roll recipe. The secret is very fresh yeast bought recently in small packets. If you make baking soda rolls, you need low-sodium baking powder. Normal baking powder is high in sodium.

1 packet or punnet of extra firm tofu
2 large eggs or 3 small eggs (a large egg is about 85 mg sodium)
2 med carrots (or a large handful of julienned carrot sticks)
1 very large or 2 large potatoes
1/2 cup flour
Mixed Italian herbs
olive oil (1/3 cup)
1 large or 2 med onions
6 med or 12 small mushrooms
1 large tsp finely-chopped garlic.
Lime juice (1/3 cup)  (Lime juice and white vinegar work as salt-substitutes for Meniere’s patients. Commercial options like no-salt have a lot of potassium, so don’t overdo them.)

Optional – chopped nuts – your choice. They must be unsalted of course.

• Peel or scrape the potato. Wrap them in a cloth or a potato bag and microwave until fully baked. Cool a bit. Chop them into small pieces when they are cool enough to handle.
• Chop the tofu into small cubes and place it is a large strainer. Press it until liquid runs out. It is best to get as much liquid out as possible. This is important. I also squeeze it in my hands a bit. Place in a large mixing bowl with herbs.
• Chop the onions and mushrooms very small. Fry them in two tablespoons of the olive oil until well cooked. Cool a bit.
• In a blender, place the eggs, lime juice and chopped, peeled carrots. Blend to a creamy consistency.
• Put the flour in a strainer so that you can sift it onto the mix evenly.
• Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix all the ingredients, dusting the mixture with flour as you go. I mash up the potato by mixing everything with an electric hand-mixer – this gives it texture. The baked mushed-up potato act as a type of binder. You can also add sodium-free bread crumbs instead of flour if you like.

• Add chopped nuts if desired.
• Pour the rest of the olive oil into a baking sheet.
• Form the mix into  6 large burger-shaped patties, and put them on the baking sheet.
• Bake for about 25 minutes.
• Serve with sodium-free, round hamburger-buns, salad and condiments. (Heintz and Hunts make sodium-free ketchup.)
• Crispy rosemary potatoes make a good side dish
• The hot sauce from the sticky tofu recipe also works with these burgers, if you like hot sauce.

Crispy rosemary potatoes

Scrape and microwave more potatoes. Amazon.com has great potato bags – you just put the potatoes in the microwave and press “potato” and they come out nicely baked. Or simply wrap them in a clean dish-towel while microwaving them.

When cooked, cut the potatoes into pieces or wedges and stir-fry in a little olive oil with crushed rosemary. When they are crisp and hot, people do not even notice that they have no salt.

I just toss them around until golden, and Hilton, my lawyer husband carefully browns each side of each piece – whatever works for you 🙂 They’re delicious anyway.